June 23, 2009

In February of 1973, President Nixon called future president and then-Republican National Committee chairman George H.W. Bush, and recounted a recent visit to the South Carolina state legislature.

"I noticed a couple of very attractive women, both of them Republicans, in the legislature," Nixon told Bush. "I want you to be sure to emphasize to our people, God, let's look for some… Understand, I don't do it because I'm for women, but I'm doing it because I think maybe a woman might win someplace where a man might not… So have you got that in mind?"

50 comments:

"My dad was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Some of his grandparents had been slaves. My mom was born in Hollywood, California. One of her great-grandfathers, on her dad's side, is said to have signed the Declaration of Independence.

You might guess I'm not so keen on the availability of abortion in the case of interracial marriages? Perhaps if my parents had not been I love I might not have been born? And now, what will the leftists say? They're all about civil rights, diversity and social progress? Would NOW think twice before a suction cutterage abortion for a black fetus? How about dilation and extraction, eight months after a white mother-to-be has second thoughts about the child's black father? Abortion is already racial genocide for the black community, where "One of every three black babies is killed before birth."

To be fair to Nixon, although he was a little behind the times, so were a lot of people in his time. Acceptance of interracial relationships is something that's still an issue for many people today. Beyond interracial relationships, interreligion relationships are still taboo in many religions.

It's a mistake to be outraged by the attitude of people who weren't terribly out of step with society at the time. If Nixon were alive today and saying those things, then it would be "outrageous." But applying today's moral standards to a time 36 years (or even centuries, as Leftists like to do to the Founding Fathers) ago will always yield unsatisfactory results.

I'm just old enough to remember the the way a kind of casual racism permeated American society, even in places where there weren't many blacks around to base a judgment on. Brazil nuts were called "nigger toes." "The last one's a nigger baby," was a common challenge. I was probably old enough to know not to use that N word, before I knew what it referred to. We saw Amos N Andy on tv, but all the black people other than the zany characters like the Kingfish and Algonquin J. Calhoun, seemed perfectly normal, so I understood that these characters weren't typical of all people of African descent.

When I was a teenager, we were seeing negro protesters being sprayed with fire hoses and attacked by police dogs on television. But I remember too that interracial marriages weren't considered a good idea. And abortion wasn't even an issue until the 70s.

Re: Sullivan's quip, "So the 37th president would have aborted the 44th" Very witty but, of course, it misses just a little something.

It's Sullivan and the rest of the pro-choice community who are willing to abort many potential future presidents.

Sure, they can say it's not for any racist reason that they want remain free to do so but, in the end, Nixon's line (as shocking as it is) doesn't have the same negative impact on the black community as 40 years of abortion.

If Nixon came back from the dead (don't laugh, he did it once already), he would still find "a few" women in the South Carolina legislature. None (that's zero) in the state senate, and 11 in the house of representatives. SC is the only bicameral state with no female senators and has, I believe, the lowest percentage of female house members (about 10%.)

The legislature in South Carolina has considerably more power than the governor--a state of affairs dating back to Ben Tillman. They use these powers badly in nearly every respect. It's no wonder that Governor Sanford took off for a few days. He's been doing battle with these clowns (mostly members of his own party) for nearly eight years.

In fairness to Nixon, back in 1973 he was in the centrist camp on abortion. His great political feat was saving the Republicans from the destruction of Goldwater by crafting a "Silent Majority" - then realizing that in many ways, since Southern Fundie Democrats bolted for Goldwater and were the only states he carried outside AZ - the Southern Strategy would work.

Especially since he would have had a landslide in 1968 but for Wallace's carrying the Religious Right.

But it was dangerous, because Nixon also wrote elsewhere that the racists and Fundies and anti-abortion zealots could alienate the rest of the country from Republicans if they took over(which eventually DID happen as Nixon feared).

So they had to be kept in check as he finished school desegregation, implimented abortion law. And he knew that even Fundies would recoil about forcing a "dishonored" raped woman carry to term or asking a future Reagan McCain or Huckabee supporter down there what they would do "if their daughter was knocked up by a nigger"? - (not Nixon's words, but the political argument Nixon was framing that will still TODAY stop a 'Jesus loves his baby blastocysts' fanatic down South in dead in their tracks, as well as anti-abortion Catholic white ethnics, and hispanics.)

==============As for women, Nixon was hard at work trying to get women officeholders, Cubans, Jews and their money&media clout to further expand the Republican Party.

Althouse left out the 2nd part of today's articles Nixon quote - which suggests he wanted more women Republican activists and officeholders..not because they were women per se, but because they were a good addition to his crafted Majority coalition:

And in the 2nd quote, you also get the full flavor of the Bush Yale, Skull&Bones, Greenwich CT Banker Scion Family condecension:

Boy, they were good lookin' and bright," Nixon continues. And he had been informed, further, that "they're two of the best members of the House."

Sorry, Jim, I don't buy it. Even in the early 70s, I think Nixon was out of step with society at large in this (though many would have agree: my wife's late grandfather would have thought he didn't go far enough and his wife's family believed the civil war had never ended. Of course, the blacks, Jews and Hispanics that lived on their street were "different"--it was the rest who were a problem.)

There is something to be said for not jumping the gun with every wiff of a blunt of likely freedom.

But at the same time we have have to remember how things might have been different had Ronald Reagan had the Chinese tank man's back instead of Solidarity.

Had the Venezuelans had Ronald Reagan instead of Solidarity. and so on.

I was reading Freeman's post about this and on a first read it may sound like a downer but it's not.

Waht it did it made me think waht if we take up the Reagan principles and sell them for waht they were, for waht they are.We dont need to wait for another Reagan. Reagan is in each and every one of us.

Its no accident that that waht is happening in the streets of Iran is happening while we - US mighty - instead of might are phisically to their east south and west.

In 1973, Bill Ayers co-authored the book Prairie Fire with members of the Weather Underground. It was dedicated to Harriet Tubman, John Brown, and Sirhan Sirhan (assassin of RFK), among others.

In October 1973, the Arab nations attacked Israel, and within days Israel faced defeat. Nixon repeatedly intervened: "Tell them to send everything that can fly." Over the course of a month US airplanes sent over 27,900 tons of materiel. Israel was saved due to the massive infusion of military aid.

By 1973, my father had moved us from his good job in Omaha to a crappy job in Minnesota, because of riots in 1971 and 72 that saw molotov cocktails thrown at cop cars and punks robbing random houses and my dad had to sit on the porch every evening with a shotgun.

Fathers do that sort of thing for their families.Goddamn hippies.Fuck abortion.

It's unfortunate though that the GOP never did support female candidates the way the Democrats have.

After the 2006 election, there were equal numbers of Democratic and Republican male house members, and the entire Democratic majority in the house of Represenatives was credited to a 51-21 edge among Democratic congresswomen over their female Republican counterparts. I'm not sure what the number is today but I doubt if it's any closer (maybe even worse-- in my own CD, Arizona-1 we went from a Republican man to a Democratic woman representing us after the 2008 election.)

Republicans (perhaps deterred by their views on gender equality) have never developed the equivalent of EMILY'S List, an effective organization to recruit and give female candidates the resources they need to reach the highest levels of government.

To witness the apparent obsession with Fox news is to believe that Obama might harbor in his hart of harts that he will fail. And so he needs Fox news as a kind of proof, evidence to present to the world why he failed.

I mean it would be a joke if they were not paying so much attention to them.

Look at the repubis. They are still (but not for long) reduced to waiting for Obama to overplay his hand or whatever it is so they can pounce. And even then the pouncing looks so political Obama gets the benefit.

So other than a whole lot of completely overrated lofty rhetoric what is left? Not a whole lot.

Whether his most ardent worshippers want to believe it or not, most Americans are not completely incapable of observing cause and effect and detecting BS when they hear it. Every day that passes his credibility takes another shot.

When even the fawning press has started to wake up and smell the feces he's been shovelling, you know there's deep panic at the White House.

Today's press conference wasn't a sign of strength: it was a desperate attempt to stop an even more serious slide in his popularity. It remains to be seen if he did himself any favors with his snippy responses.

Even if he does in the short run, the press is already smelling blood in the water. It's easy to get under his skin because the veneer is so thin, and there's nothing a reporter (even a liberal one) loves more than thinking he's smarter or more clever than the subject of his story.

The campaign ads are writing themselves every day, and Obama's writing the script.

I read FreemanHunt's post and thought about certain things I'm doing and how.

I confess when I went to Freeman Hunt's page my first thought was, "Wow, I forgot how stunning she was."

I have a little nostalgia for the days when the classics were mastered by every educated man. (Eighth grade was enough education for any girl not intending to become a schoolteacher.) Even in my day, my peers who went to Jesuit high school had to study Greek and Latin, as well as a modern language. The problem is that there is just so much more to be learned nowadays than in the days of the trivium and quadrivium. Something has to go, and decoding dead languages has been thrown overboard.

Intellectual rigor is provided by math and science far advanced over the medieval arithmetic (algebra at that time being patiently conserved by the Muslims), geometry, astronomy, and music.

Paradoxically, though, people no longer develop the logical reasoning, orderly writing, and persuasive speaking skills that once marked the educated man. But these skills can be developed outside of the study of Greek and Latin.

Unless he pulls a rabitt I dont think he is getting reelected.Clinton's first two years were one fiasco or scandal after another. He even got bad press, until the media realized they'd lost the Congress.

"Half of all aborted fetuses are black. So it would appear that Nixon's attitude is still the dominant one, at least among liberals."

It's hardly a surprise that this is true as Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist who founded Planned Parenthood expressly to control the numbers of black children.

A couple of years back, a college Republican group called various Planned Parenthood chapters and asked if they would be allowed to donate money for the express purpose of aborting a black baby in order to test if Sanger's racist attitudes still permeated the organization. In at least several instances (I don't remember if it was all of them.), they were told that they absolutely would be able to do so.

The recordings of those conversations were made public, and in each case the supposed donor made it clear that the reason they wanted to abort black babies was for negative, racist reasons - not a concern for black communities.

There's a reason why the vast majority of Planned Parenthood offices aren't located in upscale areas, and it isn't because the ground rents there are higher.

Cedarford, do you actually KNOW any Southern Evangelicals or Catholic Pro-lifers???

Catholics younger than about... 70... are indifferent to interracial couples. Total non-issue. And I know many white families where the unmarried daughter has given birth to AND raised an interacial baby with nothing but support from her parents.

And the south actually seems to have (just my observation, no stats) more interracial couples than the NE. Also, when I lived in the NE, neighborhoods were very segregated. There were white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods and that was that. My in-law's neighborhood in AL? About 50/50.

Try spending some time with your political enemies before you engage in ad hominem attacks!